Is it Empathy, or is it something else? The boy with the uncut lip.
Empathy or something else? The boy with the invisible split lip.
(please note; I use mother here as a shorthand for all kinds of primary caregiver; Fathers, grandparents and others can provide this nurture)
“When a child was injured or disappointed in the nursery school,” Sroufe recalls, “since we were filming, we were able to go back and study the reactions of different children. We found that a number of ambivalent kids had difficulty maintaining a boundary between themselves and a distressed child. That’s customary for really young children — two-year-olds would do this — but these kids were 4 or 5. So, for example, a little girl fell on her lip, and one of the ambivalent kids immediately put his hand his own mouth and went and got up on a teacher’s lap. It was as though it had happened to him. In the same situation an avoidant kid would do something like call him a cry baby. Whether it whereas a secure child would get a teacher and bring the teacher to the child will standby and look concerned.” 1.
I am studying theories of early development as part of my training and this paragraph landed like an unexpected swarm of bees.
The sentence, in bold type, about the child who, in observing the injury of another child, acted exactly as if the injury had happened to him. His hand moved to his own mouth, where the other child was injured. He climbed onto a secure adult for care and comfort. Just as if it had occurred to him and he needed comfort.
I saw myself in that sentence. I saw all the many times my body felt the pain of others, which was prohibitively costly as a surgical nurse! I saw, like a series of jaggedly spliced film clips, the times where I found it hard to separate the suffering of others from my own experience as if their experience was mine.
How had I interpreted that?
Well, I knew it didn’t happen to everyone. I’d watched people not fall apart at accident scenes and in A&E. I’d watched parents respond with calm and support when their children had been injured. I’d even managed it myself at times, but I recognised that my experience, like the little boy with the uninjured mouth, got tangled with that of others.
I had learned to name that empathy. I had learned to name that High sensitivity. I had learned to see that as a skill and a gift.
What the bees that buzzed out of the story, stung me with was the idea that it could be an adaptation that was not always helpful and in fact, on that could be harmful to relationship and capacity to respond with care.
How does it happen?
In the model of attachment, if we are contained well by a well-regulated parent, if our needs are consistently met by someone who is well resourced and able to separate our needs as a helpless baby from their needs, who can acknowledge us we begin to understand where we start and finish, then we begin to understand what it’s like to be contained.
Imagine the reassurance gained by a new baby who is overwhelmed by the stimuli of this new, bright, noisy, unwomb-like world. Imagine them learning to make sense of their experiences, being warmly and gently held, of hearing in tender tones; “Oh, you are hungry!” “Yes, that loud noise gave you a fright!” “I’m here little one, there, there.”
These warmly responsive things create a sense for the baby of who they are in relation to others. They create a sense of where they start and finish. What is theirs and not theirs to respond to. They help baby establish a sense of the world that is trustworthy and responsive, that will take care of them, is safe to explore and help them when they are challenged. This is known as secure attachment.
With this kind of parenting, or a good dollop of from a (as Winnicott says) “good enough mother” we feel secure in the world we encounter. What happens to babies, the theory goes, is a predictor of what kind of adult life we will experience.
What else is possible?
When we are raised in a relationship where care is not taken to acknowledge our experience, “Oh they’re just a kid, you’re spoiling them”. When our needs are not being consistently met, “Just do it yourself I’m busy!” Where we are asked to anticipate the needs of our caregivers rather than have them tend to ours, “How could you do that to Mummy?” When we learn to be alert to the signals all around us rather than being able to trust our own worthiness of care, we learn to interpret our “uncontainedness” as a fault of ours. “I should know better. I am must be a bad girl for Mum to be so mad at me…”
When these experiences pile up like snow on the top of a mountain, we become those who live in fear that the slightest noise will cause an avalanche.
In the language of attachment, we become “anxious or ambivalent” about what we understand the world holds for us.
When we are not sure if we deserve care or connection or punishment or avoidance, we learn to mistake our own cues. We learn to mistrust the signals from those around us and the signals within us.
We begin to develop overly acute perceptions of pain, disquiet and we try to anticipate the “right response” in situations, rather than building an innate understanding of what is happening and true for us.
Our boundaries blur. We don’t perceive accurately where we start, and another begins.
So back to the little boy with the uninjured mouth.
Like the mountain with too much snow on it, the unprotected child is precarious. They can’t trust care, they are uncertain about where they start and end, and so where others begin and end. The little one with an insecure attachment can receive the information about another’s suffering as a sound that sets off an avalanche.
The avalanche may happen in a tumble that looks like; I see suffering, that perception is diffuse, I can’t tell where it originates, where I am involved, I scan the situation without boundaries and see the suffering as my own. I respond as if I am the one in need. It becomes problematic, even if I mask my need and attend to the other, the confusion of response muddies the waters.
The problematic piece is the struggle for the uncontained child to separate their needs and the needs of others. In other words, the boundarilessness.
So, what does that mean for being an empath.
Please know that being empathic is a valuable skill. When we understand deeply the suffering and the joy of others it helps us share a connection and experience. Empathy is a definite skill. Being able to perceive other’s wellbeing and suffering is an important part of relationship.
The piece I am raising up is what happens inside the little boy.
If the needs of others mess up his capacity to respond to what’s really there, for him and for others it gets in the way of healthy relationship.
If in my boundarilessness I am misreading other’s suffering as my own, I use up immense energy navigating this. I get flooded with feeling, both theirs and my own. I can’t navigate a healthy use of resources, or a capacity to ask for help. If I endure this for a long time, the world can feel like a difficult and exhausting place.
It can also be an unintended boundaries violation. If I am constantly (and unconsciously) feeling into your experience it muddies the relational field between us. If we are in a respectful relationship with another we need to be invited into this space, not occupy it as of right. This is something we learn if we are blessed with a secure attachment and, I suggest something we need to learn as an adult who doesn’t have a secure attachment.
Dr Estés teaches us that through our injuries come our giftedness. Empathy certainly qualifies as a gift and in the scenario of the child with the unharmed lip, it comes from an early wounding to our need for attachment and containment.
If we continue to be unboundaried and use this gift in a way that mixes us up with others, creating mistaken experiences, we are not using it to the full, in fact, we may be treating it disrespectfully.
If we can learn to have healthy boundaries, both internal about what is mine to feel and tend to, and external, what belongs to others, we can build a healthy and generative experience of empathy.
In this way we can be empathetic but not tangled. In fact, I believe we are much more generous as empaths if we are able to feel where we start and end.
So many of us are in life trying to navigate this space. So many of us were parented by parents who were themselves carrying wounds. Hell, I parented wounded, we are human and all we can do is do our best to tend to what we can with the skills we have.
To recover from our earliest losses and wounds, our uncertainties, and the vulnerabilities they create we need to recover our other gifts, our instincts, and our healthy boundaries. Doing this work is not a quick fix but when we live with boundaries and instinct intact, we can be both generous and wise in the use of our gifts. Empathy becomes something alive, responsive, and tender. We can take the hand from our own mouth and do things for each other that really make a difference.
- Robert Karen Ph.D. Becoming Attached; First Relationships and How They Shape Our Capacity To Love. Page 185